Sacred Wisdom Teachings


The Wisdom Teachings of Gary Zukav

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The fourth translation of Wu Li is "I Clutch My Ideas." This is
appropriate to a book on physics since the history of science in general
often has been the story of scientists vigorously fighting an onslaught
of new ideas. This is because it is difficult to relinquish the sense of
security that comes from a long and rewarding acquaintance with a
particular world view.
The value of a physical theory depends upon its usefulness. In this
sense the history of physical theories might be said to resemble the
history of individual personality traits. Most of us respond to our
environment with a collection of **automatic responses** that brought
desirable results, usually in childhood. Unfortunately, if the
environment that produced these responses change (we grow up) and the
responses themselves do not adapt, they become counterproductive.
Showing anger, becoming depressed, flattering, crying, and bullying
behavior are **response patterns** appropriate to times often long past.
These patterns change only when we are forced to realize that they are
no longer productive. Even then change is often painful and slow. The
same is true of scientific theories.

Not one person, except Copernicus, wanted to accept the Copernian idea
that the earth revolves around the sun. Goethe wrote about the Copernian
revolution:

Perhaps a greater demand has never been laid upon mankind, for the
admission that the earth is not the center of the universe, how much
else did not collapse in dust and smoke: a second paradise, a world of
innocence, poetry, and piety, the witness of the senses, the convictions
of a poetic and religious faith, no wonder that men had no stomach for
all this, they ranged themselves in every way against such a doctrine.

Scientific revolutions are forced upon us by the discovery of phenomena
that are not comprehensible in terms of the old theories. Old theories
die hard. Much more is at stake than the theories themselves. To give up
our privileged position at the center of the universe, as Copernicus
asked, was an enormous psychological task. To accept that nature is
fundamentally irrational (governed by chance, which is the essential
statement of quantum physics (that is to say that it is impossible to
know the momentum of a particle and its location at the same time), is a
powerful blow to the intellect. Nonetheless, as new theories demonstrate
superior utility, their adversaries, however reluctantly, have little
choice but to accept them. In so doing, they also must grant a measure
of recognition to the world views that accompany them.

Today, particle accelerators, bubble chambers and computer printouts are
giving birth to another world view. This world view is as different from
the world view at the beginning of this century as the Copernian world
view was from its predecessors. It calls upon us to relinquish many of
our closely clutched ideas.

In this world view there is no substance.

The most common question that we can ask about an object is, "What is it
made of?" That question, however, "What is it made of? is based upon an
artificial mental structure that is much like a hall of mirrors. If we
stand directly between two mirrors and look into one, we see our
reflection, and just behind ourselves, we see a crowd of "us's" each
looking at the back of the head in front of it, stretching backward as
far as we can see. These reflections, all of them, are illusions. The
only real thing in the whole setting is us (we).

This situation is very similar to what happens whenever we ask of
something. "What is it made of?" The answer to such a question is always
another something to which we can apply the same question. <P>Suppose
for example, that we ask a toothpick, "What is it made of?" The answer,
of course, is "wood". However, the question itself has taken us into a
hall of mirrors because now we can ask about the wood, "What is it made
of?" Closer examination reveals that wood is made of fibers, but what
the fibers are made of is another question, and so on.

Like a pair of parallel mirrors, reflecting reflections, gives the
illusion of an unending progression to nowhere, the idea that a thing
can be different from what it is made of creates an infinite progression
of answers, leaving us forever frustrated in an unending search. No
matter what something -- anything is "made of," we have created an
illusion which forces us to ask, "yes" but what is that made of?" ***or
who was the creator, of the creator***

Physicists are people who have pursued tenaciously this endless series
of questions. What they have found is startling .... Wood fibers, to
continue the example, are actually patterns of cells. Cells, under
magnification, are revealed to be patterns of molecules. Molecules under
higher magnification, are found to be patterns of atoms, and, lastly,
atoms have turned out to be patterns of subatomic particles. In other
words, "matter" is actuality a series of patterns out of focus. The
search for the ultimate stuff of the universe ends with the discovery
that there isn't any.

If there is any ultimate stuff of the universe, it is pure energy, but
subatomic particles are not "made" of energy, they are energy. This is
what Einstein theorized in 1905. Subatomic interactions, therefore, are
interactions of energy with energy. At the subatomic level there is no
longer a clear distinction between what is and what happens, between the
actor and the action. At the subatomic level the dancer and the dance
are one.

According to particle physics, the world is fundamentally dancing
energy, energy that is everywhere and incessantly assuming first this
form and then that. What we have been calling matter (particles)
constantly is being created, annihilated and created again. This happens
as particles interact and it also happens, literally, out of nowhere.

Where there was "nothing" there suddenly is "something" and then the
something is gone again, often changing into something else before
vanishing. In particle physics there is no distinction between empty, as
in "empty space," and not empty, or between something and not-something,
The world of particle physics is a world of sparkling energy forever
dancing with itself in the form of its particles as they twinkle in and
out of existence, collide, transmute and disappear again.

Gary Zukav

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